Set, System, Repertoire

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres, pages 54-65

Charles Bazerman: "Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems"

JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski: "Genre Systems: Structuring Interaction through Communicative Norms." 

While I read Devitt first, I got so bogged down in the seemingly subtle distinctions between genre sets, genre systems and genre repositories that it took all of the next two readings to help my head stop spinning. Meanwhile, I may be in danger of seeing genre systems everywhere. I certainly did when I went out to get a bite to eat tonight. The place I went has a counter, so I know to go to the counter to place my order. The server sees me and comes to take my order; she writes it down and brings the slip to the kitchen window. I get my drink and sit down and wait. Meanwhile the cook reads my order, assembles the food and notifies the server when it’s ready. When I’m ready to leave, I pay my tab by handing over a credit card, then signing the resulting receipt.

When the entire process is broken down, it is very easy to use Yates’ and Orlikowski’s six dimensions of communication to identify the participants (me, server, cook), the purpose (to get food to me so that I am happy), the content (verbal order, order slip, receipt), the form (which I am inclined to merge with content, though the expectation is that the server will make note of my order and convey the information to the cook and that I will tender a form of payment before I leave), the time (later than I would like) and the place (Nick’s, because I can get a Blenheim ginger ale there). In this case, I question the importance of time and place because they are not an essential aspect of the system, but the whole experience serves to confirm Bazerman’s contention that “considering the activity system in addition to the genre system puts a focus on what people are doing and how texts help people do it, rather than on texts as ends in themselves” (319).

In fact, I’m not sure I can separate genre systems from activity systems since the activity systems support and perpetuate the genre systems that are in turn contribute structure and expectations to the activity systems, similar to the circular relationship of situation and response to which I referred in yesterday’s post. Within the activity system of a restaurant, the genre systems of ordering, preparing and serving are used habitually as “an efficient and easy way for team members to coordinate their actions” (Yates 32). Also, there is very little room for misinterpretation in the speech acts as described by Bazerman (314-315). When I approach, the server assumes correctly that I’m interested in ordering. The locutionary act of ordering in this context matches the illocutionary act I intend the server to hear. Unless she is not very good at her job, the perlocutionary effect on her will be that she understands that I want a certain food.

Bazerman and Yates and Orlikowski are fairly clear on their definitions of genre sets and genre systems. The set belongs to an individual. In my example the server produces the ticket and the receipt to create a genre set, while the system encompasses the multiple genres of server, cook and patron and the texts and utterances we produce with our interactions within the system. Devitt thinks that these terms are a bit confining and prefers to use genre system to refer to established genre sets and to retain the term genre set to refer to loose or informal sets of genres (56-57). In her interpretation, a system is more governed by rules than a set.

To grow the terminology, she elaborates on the concept of a genre repertoire, a “set of genres that a group owns, acting through which a group achieves all of its purposes…”(57). The repertoire is the most overarching and the least confining because a repertoire provides a selection of genre sets from which participants can choose. While I agree that the addition of a repertoire allows more freedom, I think that making a distinction between formal and informal genre sets is more limiting instead of less because it further categorizes, possibly making it harder to draw connections between the structured genre of the legal system and the less formal genres of a volunteer book sale.